


The Age of Miracles

by pocketbookangel



Category: Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Genre: Angst, F/F, Hopeful Ending, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-16
Updated: 2014-08-16
Packaged: 2018-02-13 09:00:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2144817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pocketbookangel/pseuds/pocketbookangel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mami discovers that simply wishing to continue living isn't enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Age of Miracles

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rubyroth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rubyroth/gifts).



> About timelines and witches: The first part of this story is set during Homura's second timeline in episode 10, but the witch is the one we see Madoka and Mami fight in her first timeline, [Izabel](http://wiki.puella-magi.net/Izabel).
> 
> This fic was written before I saw Rebellion, so the ending isn't supposed to refer to anything that happens in the films.
> 
> Mami's class is studying Osamu Dazai's _No Longer Human_ (人間失格).

Ten minutes until cleaning time, half an hour until club activities. The minute hand moved forward slowly. Mami was a member of the flower arranging club, an activity that met often enough to fulfill Mitakihara’s requirements, while allowing shy girls to slip away from school early. Before she’d died in the accident, Mami had been a member of the art club and had spent her afternoons drawing girls with kind eyes and flowing hair, the girls she’d hoped to befriend one day, maybe in high school, maybe later once she was a real adult and living on her own.

Mami lived on her own now, but she’d given up all thoughts of later or life as a real adult.

Five minutes until cleaning time, the restless energy of waiting was so strong even the teacher sensed it. His voice grew louder, “ _The weak fear happiness itself. They can harm themselves on cotton wool. Sometimes they are wounded even by happiness._ What do you think he means by that? He finally spends the night with a woman he feels connected to, so why is he afraid?”

“Why ask us?” mumbled the boy next to Mami. “The way this school is, the teachers here don’t even know anything about spending the night with someone.”

“Tomoe?”

Happiness ends and when it does you’re lonelier than before. “I don’t know,” she said.

The world stopped. The teacher, the students, her neighbor sulking at his desk, the clock with two minutes until the end of class.

“Tomoe-senpai!” Homura burst into the classroom, glasses crooked, braids unwinding. “I don’t know what to do! I thought, it was only a familiar, I thought—”

“Where is it? Can you freeze it with your magic?”

Homura started to cry. “I tried. I really did. It’s not growing or moving anymore, but inside… my classmates are inside and I don’t know where Kaname-san is.”

Mami wanted to let Homura cry on her shoulder, to fix her hair and tell her it would be all right. That was weakness. “Our job is to protect everyone from the witches, and you can’t do that if you’re crying,” she said.

“It’s so different from last time.”

Mami released her Soul Gem. Sunshine-colored power, daisies and gillyflowers turned their faces to the light and basked in the love of their god. She opened her arms and let the bright, yellow ribbons embrace her and in the moment of her transformation, the universe opened with infinite possibilities.

“Let’s go,” she said. The two Magical Girls ran towards the witch’s labyrinth.

Like Mami, the Magical Girl who would become Witch Izabel had been in the art club at her school. She’d wished to be the greatest artist in the world. Well, not the _greatest_ , not like Leonardo, she would settle for first-rate and influential like Cézanne or Gaugin. Kyubey had listened patiently while she rambled on about color and paint until she made her wish.

For the first time in her life, the images she created on canvas matched the ones in her head. Fighting witches was a tiresome distraction from her real work, painting the visions dancing behind her eyes. She painted and painted, but the world wasn’t interested in the work of a sixteen-year-old from a country town. Polite indifference burned more than insults, color drained from the landscape, she painted black, white, grey mutilated faces, arms, legs at wrong angles; she painted rage and despair as her Soul Gem darkened. One day, after defeating the witch of metal and speed, it shattered into a Grief Seed and the artist was reborn as a witch.

The air in front of Mami and Homura shimmered with Izabel’s barrier, turning the real world hazy and insubstantial. Mami prepared her musket before stepping through, while Homura looked around for Madoka.

“Kaname-san…”

The way Homura talked about Madoka was strange, almost as if she’d known her for longer than a couple of days. Madoka had blushed when she described how Homura had run up to her and started talking about Magical Girls in front of the entire class.

“You have to believe this time will be different. You’re not going to run away again, are you?” Mami asked. Keeping her voice reassuring was difficult. If Homura learned to use her power, she could be the strongest Magical Girl of all, but right now she was so helpless. Mami fired at the familiars that rose to meet them.

The witch’s colors were bright and hot, so Homura put out her hand, expecting dried paint under her fingers. She screamed and she grabbed at Mami’s hand as the artwork swallowed her. They tumbled through the cerulean blue sky down to the viridian and aureolin streets.

White stone buildings sketched by an impatient hand blurred into the sky, cobblestones glistened under their feet. Unfinished statues, eyeless horses and their riders galloped past. The air became red and thick as the witch angrily painted the sky vermilion.

“It’s a city. How far did you come in before you came to get me?” Mami pulled Homura away from the sticky paint that trickled between the cobblestones.

“I didn’t…”

Mami didn’t know about the last time Homura had walked through Izabel’s labyrinth, and how the most important day in her life had almost been her last. The witch’s voice had whispered death in her ear, promising eternal beauty and peace. She would have been lost forever if it hadn’t been for Madoka.

“Witches rarely leave the heart of their maze, if this is her dream of Paris, she must be somewhere famous, like the Eiffel Tower or the Louvre.” Mami aimed her musket at the advancing statues and fired. Witch dream city of love and art, grotesquely painted couples kissing, kissing, breaking apart, hungry canvas mouths yearning to devour them both.

“It’s the stone arch,” Homura said.

Mami’s ribbons easily knocked the artworks out of their way as they ran to the witch. She signaled to Homura, who stopped the witch’s time. Mami lined up her rifles, the hands of the clock moved forward, and Izabel exploded. The witch roared in fury, all was lost, her great works undone. Her world melted, leaving only a Grief Seed as evidence that she had once lived.

“You can have this one,” Mami said, graciously. Instead of taking it, Homura threw her arms around Mami, laughing. She was talking about Madoka, something about how Kaname-san didn’t always have to be the one in danger. She hugged Mami tighter, then quickly, lightly, kissed her on the cheek.

“Thank you,” she said.

Homura’s simple, affectionate gesture surprised Mami. It had been so long since she’d been touched by another person. The only hands that reached for hers belonged to the creatures she was trying to destroy. Her first instinct was to escape. Her second instinct, the one she followed, was to keep Homura close and kiss her back. She touched Homura’s slightly parted lips with her own, trying to capture her smile and sweet laughter. The softness of Homura’s lips and the feeling of being held in her gentle arms sent tiny flickers of longing through Mami’s skin. She wanted more—how lovely it would be to unbraid Homura’s hair and run her fingers through its darkness, to take off her glasses and see the light shining in her eyes.

Homura sighed a little, and Mami heard a name that was not hers. She stepped back, smiling. “I think we’d better take care of your Soul Gem,” she said.

The students who’d been caught by the witch were still unconscious; the witch’s spell had faded to a bewitched sleep.

“Can you make time go back at all? We need to get everyone to class and it would be better if we returned as well.”

The clockwork in Homura’s shield began to turn.

Five minutes until cleaning time, less than half an hour until club activities.

The teacher’s voice grew louder. “Why is he afraid? Tomoe?”

“The narrator knows that the connection he formed with the woman isn’t real and that happiness based on a lie is worse than being alone.” Mami closed her book and waited for the clock to release her into the future.

\--

Mami wondered what it would be like if Magical Girls could truly work together without the competition for Grief Seeds. It would make sense for Kyouko and Homura to live with her, more convenient if they all lived together. They’d fight witches and never have to be alone.

_I’m different from the others because their wishes were made from love. Kyouko’s love for her family, Sayaka’s love for Kyousuke, Homura’s love for Madoka, Madoka’s love for the world._

Despair clouded her Soul Gem.

_I didn’t save my parents, I only saved myself. Such a selfish, wicked girl._

\--

The café was elegant, with vanilla walls and bright silks fluttering over the windows, revealing and hiding the vines blossoming outside. A pot of tea and sugared violet cakes were set out on the embroidered tablecloth. The serene room made Kyouko’s red hair stand out, a scarlet rose in a field of snow.

“I can tell this is your dream, not mine,” Kyouko grumbled. She sniffed at the apple tea Mami had chosen and added another sugar cube.

“It could be our dream,” Mami said. Black tea with a harmonious blend of green and red apples. She wanted to laugh at herself. Kyouko would not be convinced if Mami started out by comparing them to apples.

“It’s not just that we need to work together, it’s that I want to.” Mami tried to keep her voice calm and reasonable, hiding her fear. Facing death was part of being a Magical Girl, a danger that was also thrilling. Honesty was dangerous in a different way, and Kyouko was unpredictable.

“I don’t like this place. If you want to take me on a date, amusement park. And you have to buy me popcorn,” Kyouko said. She busily added more sugar and more milk to her tea.

“This isn’t about—”

“And we have to ride the roller coasters. All of them, twice. Saturday.”

They would ride the roller coasters twice, they would hold hands and scream in delighted terror in the haunted house, they would kiss as the Ferris wheel carried them over the park. In this world, one that was so like her own, Mami wouldn’t have to be afraid of anything, and she could live knowing that her real wish was coming true.


End file.
